How Askok Kumar went from playing lead to father's role and other stories
Why filmmakers are forced to change actors’ roles at the last moment.
Two recent instances of filmmakers replacing actors after the film was shot and even ready for release brought to mind how this practice is probably more common than one would imagine. Xavier Dolan cutting Jessica Chastain out of his new film was reminiscent of Terrance Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998), where the then reclusive filmmaker began the film with Adrien Brody as the lead, even shot accordingly, but ended with a version that not only saw more than 90 per cent of the future Oscar-winning actor’s work thrown out, but also had an entirely new lead.
Dramatic might
But Dolan’s decision to remove Chastain from his English-language debut, The Death and Life of John F Donovan, had little to do with how he perceived his story; rather Dolan felt that the character was no longer compatible with the storyline once he saw an edited version of his film.
Ideally, the world would have expressed shock at such a development, but in the shadow of Ridley Scott “replacing” Kevin Spacey entirely from his film, All The Money in the World (2017), just two weeks before the film was to release, in the wake of the sexual misconduct allegations, has probably set the bar for actors being cut from films. By comparison, anything that isn’t remotely as dramatic might not make news anymore.
There are broadly two categories where filmmakers’ decision to cut an actor’s part once the film is shot can be put into. Primarily, such an action is taken to shorten the length of the film, as in the case of Paul Rudd’s scenes from Bridesmaids (2011), where it was felt that the narrative wouldn’t suffer.
Detrimental impact
Closer home, recently, Sonam Kapoor mentioned how some scenes that would have explained her character better in Pad Man were left out in order to not take the attention away from the main story. The other reason why such a thing happens is the manner in which a comparatively smaller character ends up taking too much of attention.
Many of us aren’t even aware that Steven Spielberg’s ET the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) originally featured Harrison Ford as Elliott’s father, but as the film focused more on the children than the adults, Ford’s cameo made people expect something else. Had it been some other actor playing the part, maybe Spielberg might have retained the track, but Ford, being one of the biggest film stars in the world, was taking away from the spine of the much-beloved film.
This is also the reason why Andy Garcia’s character – he played Michelle Pfeiffer’s boyfriend – was entirely eliminated from Dangerous Minds (1995) after it was shot, as it shifted the focus from Pfeiffer’s former Marine teaching in a pilot programme for bright but underachieving teens.
Such actions sometimes have a detrimental impact on the narrative as many critics wondered why Pfeiffer didn’t have any friends or family, but at times no one even notices the change. Remember Naomi Watts’ The Ring (2002)? It began and ended with her talking to a character played by Chris Cooper, but when the test audiences asked more of Cooper, who by then was a well-known name, the studio simply edited him out.
In India, the practice of replacing or removing an actor is more a function of necessity, and even social and business compulsion than just art. Besides the artistic decisions that led to the creation of two of India’s great Hindi films, Mughal-e-Azam (1960) and Pakeezah (1972), the act of actors being replaced, too, somewhere played a significant role in the way the films shaped out.
Having started the film in the mid-1940s, K Asif initially signed on Chandra Mohan, D K Sapru and Nargis for the roles of Akbar, Salim, and Anarkali, respectively, but numerous delays, sociopolitical developments such as the partition and independence of India, and the death of Chandra Mohan in 1949, changed the film’s course. Finally, when the film released, it had a “replaced” cast with Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, and Madhubala.
When Kamal Amrohi started Pakeezah, Ashok Kumar and Meena Kumari were the leads. Nearly two decades later, when the film released, Raaj Kumar had become the main male lead while Ashok Kumar was relegated to the father’s role.
Final cut
Interestingly enough, for a brief period, even Sunil Dutt and Dharmendra were considered for Raaj Kumar’s role, and in fact, there is a shot of Dharmendra’s back in the film, as he had shot for a few days. Even JP Dutta’s LOC Kargil (2003) had instances where the director reduced the roles of many actors to cut the length of the film.
Unlike Malick’s Thin Red Line, Dutta chose to keep nearly every actor in the final cut, even though most of them were horrified when they saw themselves on screen. At least they weren’t as shocked as Adrien Brody, who showed up at the premiere of Thin Red Line only to learn that he was no longer the lead.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)